


Crossfire

by biodigitaljazz



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Damnit, Fucking Upd8, Gen, Sadstuck, Short Based Off Of Incredible Fanart, description of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-17 11:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biodigitaljazz/pseuds/biodigitaljazz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than anything he wishes he could drum up an apology, for always being so loud, for always being an overbearingly aggressive asshole about everything, for always insulting people and making them feel like shit. But he did it out of love, tough love, it was just his nature and he almost never meant it to hurt anyone, and now is when he realizes, way too late, that maybe that’s what he’d been doing all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossfire

**Author's Note:**

> Read the upd8; got sad.  
> Listened to My Blood by Ellie Goulding; got more sad.  
> Found a comic on Tumblr; got BLOWN AWAY and was The Saddest.
> 
> This story is directly inspired by a short gut-wrenching upd8 response comic drawn by the amazingly talented "paperseverywhere" on Tumblr.  
> Anything taken from the comic is credited directly to her. You can read it over at >> http://paperseverywhere.tumblr.com/post/54374340464  
> Bring tissues.
> 
> * * *

When he realizes that his palms and fingers are wet with red from the reflexive post-trauma guarding of his wound, the first thing he wonders in the back of his mind, amidst the confusion and the dull panic and the not-quite-present but still looming realization that this may very well not turn out okay is if anyone else can see the blood, too. 

He wonders if maybe it won’t seep out into the grass and pool underneath him if he can manage to reposition himself just the right way, and he wonders if maybe there is way somehow that he can hide it. Likely not. Everything is so wet and warm; he can only distantly imagine how much he’s losing and how fast. He’d always been conscious of his blood colour, and always tried his best to keep it shielded from the judgmental eyes of others, but how is he going to hide _this_? This is a mess. It’s all over his shirt and his pants and fertilizing the ground, some of it even spattered like flecks of paint across his face and he can _smell_ it, it kind of actually smells just as red as it looks. 

Everything hurts. 

It’s a _really_ detached kind of pain, though, unlike anything he’s ever felt. He’d been hurt before, plenty of times, but nothing like this. It would be a hard thing to describe, but the last remaining eloquence in the forefront of his mind, as it slowly but steadily starts to dwindle down, tries to make sense of it. The initial push was worse – it was so painful that now, now when the weapon has already been removed and he’s left open and bleeding, he can’t even remember what it felt like. It shocked his brain into temporarily shutting down and he’s a little bit glad for that, honestly. He can only remember that it was something he’d never had to experience before now, and never wants to again. Describing it would be a lost cause. 

But now, everything hurts. The real pain is setting in. His joints feel wrong, his muscles feel wrong, even the grass underneath him cuts into him like little razor blades and all he wants, all he _actually_ wants right now is for someone to put something over him like a blanket to keep the air at bay, it’s too crisp and too cool and it’s biting hard and sharp into his open wounds. 

He wants to move, wants to see what the fuck is going on around him because there’s commotion but it’s muffled, like there’s cotton in his ears straight down to the drum and he wants to speak but he feels nauseous against the metallic taste rising up along the back of his throat. Things are changing so quickly that he can’t seem to catch up. Someone is screaming, _howling_ , it sounds like _they_ were the one who was run through and he wants to lift his head, tell them to please shut up, _please_ , that’s not fucking doing anything, why the fuck are you even screaming, and he tries, but the taste of copper suddenly gets stronger and it’s worse than nausea and he can’t formulate words around the bubble of blood that breathes past his lips.

He knows what this is. The feeling in his ears, the… what was it called… hemo… hema-something, a term he heard once, somewhere… the blood trying to find other ways aside from his obvious wounds to vacate his body, the way his vision clouds and darkens just a little around the edges – he can only guess that he’s dying, and he expects to feel more visceral panic over the realization.

Instead, he thinks about other things.

He hopes that Jade gets pulls out of it because this isn’t her, _this isn’t her at all_ and there’s nothing he can do about it now but maybe his friends can, maybe somehow John can talk her down and John, god, John came by at the worst time, didn’t he? Always like him to have such stupid comedic timing, what an asshole, so hilarious. 

He hopes that Gamzee can just get the fuck _better_ already and clean up and go back to his doofy version of normal, he was _so great_ when he was his usual self. He was easy to talk to and kind of fun and really an excellent snuggler, not that anyone else really knows. 

He regrets never having been truly honest with Terezi; he hopes that she can figure her shit out without him and take care of herself. He hopes that she can remove herself from her relationship with Gamzee because he isn’t well, he’s in no position to _be_ with anyone and she is obviously too impressionable right now to be anywhere near him.

He realizes that he should have confessed in a much more obvious way just how glad he is that he and Dave got the chance to be bros, he’s never had a friend like him and it was really nice to taste that for a little while. He wishes he could have gotten closer to him, even, because his presence was THAT significant in shaping him as a better, more stable person. And a better friend. And a more assertive leader. Dave was good for him, _so_ good for him, and he hopes that he was good for Dave, too.

More than anything he wishes he could drum up an apology, for always being so loud, for always being an overbearingly aggressive asshole about _everything_ , for always insulting people and making them feel like shit but he did it out of love, tough love, it was just his nature and he almost never meant it to hurt anyone, and now is when he realizes, way too late, that maybe that’s what he’d been doing all along.

Fuck.

Now he’s crying.

This is stupid. 

You aren’t supposed to cry like a little baby wriggler when you’re facing down death. You’re supposed to go into it with your fucking head up, goddamnit. Go into it with full control, like, no, you’re not taking me anywhere, I’m going willingly because I damn well want to.

But he’s not going willingly. This was forced on him. There’s still too much left, an entire new session to see…

Close by, above him, he hears a sob, the only _really_ clear noise he can make out above the fuzziness. It’s a strangled sound, jarring through the haze, and it sounds like it’s his name. To make sure that whoever it was wasn’t just hurt, too, he centers himself, trying and failing to control his rapidly quickening breathing, and tilts his head back enough to look at her.

He swallows hard against the blood and chokes on the feeling a few times, but eventually he manages to find his voice around it all and coughs out, “Go.”

His body wasn’t expecting a vocalization and he coughs again to clear the sudden onslaught of hot, metallic warmth rising up in his throat.

“Kan—“

She needs to get out. She needs to protect herself.

He finds the strength in his arms to reach them up and back, to grab at the first thing he comes into contact with, fisting the material of her shirt between his fingers and god, moving ANYTHING feels like moving with anchors tied to every appendage, it is so much harder than it looks or seems but this is important, he needs to get his point across before he can’t move at all.

“Kanaya,” he grinds out, and it feels like the last cough may have clear the passageways a little bit. His eyes are struggling to focus but he’s looking at her as intently as he can, her teal-streaked face is phasing and out of clarity. “Listen to me. You need to get away from here.” 

Talking feels like vigorously scrubbing sandpaper along the delicate inner walls of his throat and he probably shouldn’t be doing it, but he has to. He gives the fabric in his hands a small shake and keeps going. His mouth starts to take over, he gives her an order to leave and he wants her to obey it, even though his leadership skills are clearly not as sound or stable as he thought they were. Lousy leader or no, if anything, it’s a dying troll’s wish and he hopes that she can at the very least take that into account.

He tells her, straining and struggling as his body starts to react and shut itself down (he can’t tell if she’s trembling or if he is, maybe both, probably both) that he needs to be revived eventually, this didn’t happen for no reason and it’s all part of some plan, fucking sick as it is. But, he tells her, this can’t be repeated on her. And he tells her to protect herself.

All of these words, spilling out of him with his rattling breaths and the blood that just won’t stop, dislodged from something inside of him with each violent cough. He needs to spit most of it out just to keep talking, and soon, talking is a legitimate struggle, there’s too much blocking his voice.

He manages her name one more time, and he realizes that she hasn’t been looking at him. She lifts her head again, her face stained and wet and _broken_ , and his hands unfurl from her shirt. One of them stays, though, still soaked with red, shaking beyond his control now, and all but two of his fingers curl themselves into a fist.

She gets the hint instantly and it breaks her even more. She coughs out another strangled sound but she follows suit, and her two fingers meet his own in a diamond, and there it is, a perfect little personal goodbye to the one who never fucking let him down, not even when she was too busy dealing with her girlfriend on the meteor to check in on him regularly, not even when she lost her mind with a chainsaw, _never_. 

His hand falls back to the grass. The pain has been subsiding. The air doesn’t hurt anymore, it feels nice on his face. The grass is a lot softer now, that’s not hurting him anymore, either. The joint and muscular pain have receded into numbness and it’s an odd sensation, feeling like he’s floating while at the same time anchored fiercely into the ground with gravity so strong that he literally cannot even move his fingers, now. He’s not worried about his blood anymore, everyone can see it and they know; they can know him intimately and it’s okay. It’s still a little scary but he’s no longer panicking, he can’t when he feels himself disconnecting from everything, and the blurriness in his vision is closing in like a tunnel but not a dark one, now it’s bright. It’s like the sun is coming up so fast and it should be hurting his eyes to look directly into it but it doesn’t, it only feels weird that he can see it so vividly and clearly still even when his eyes are closed, even when his

Even when


End file.
